Quote Of The Day

"Since 1996, the amount of hip-hop I’ve bought has consistently declined, with the exception of that period in ‘98 right after Black Star came out. More funk, less hip-hop. More jazz, less hip-hop. All that to say that me and hip-hop don’t get down like that. Nevertheless, I don’t know that it’s entirely proper to try to lay the blame for the decline of Black culture at hip-hop’s feet when hip-hop itself is merely a distilled version of the combination of Black culture and the larger American culture.....That’s not to say that prolonged adolescence or any other problem should be acceptable because it’s found in other places, but the 'hip-hop did it' act is stale and tired....As I’ve said before, one of the main problems with hip-hop is that its image is far bigger than it really is. To its supporters, there is this blind faith that if it could only be properly harnessed, it could be used to revolutionize the world. For its detractors, it is a main cog in the engine that’s driving the destruction of our (Black? American?) culture. Really, it’s neither. It’s a very popular musical genre. In large part because of its popularity, it has lost its soul. The balance and diversity that made it so attractive in the first place is gone. Hip-hop is now a caricature of itself. And yeah, I agree that because of the transformation from the balanced, decent-but-not-staggering-record-sales genre that it once was to the global behemoth that it is now, the elements that seem to be most prevalent are not healthy. It stinks now. That’s why I quit it. But it’s not the source of anybody’s problems."

— Avery Tooley, moderate-conservative blogger